A Comprehensive Review on Wound Dressings and Their Comparative Effectiveness on Healing of Contaminated Wounds and Ulcers

A wound could happen at any accident or surgery. Generally, bleeding wounds, serious wounds and infectious wounds need to be taken care for recovery and in case of germ infection, wound recovery and management is a complicated process. The process including wound pre-cleaning, wound healing, infection prevention, germ treatment and dressings. The application of wound dressings play a very critical role in wound healing and infection prevention. When a wound is exposed to the pathogens and foreign substances but results in no signs of infection, it is then called as a contaminated wound. The colonized wounds are chronic, where in there are multiple pathogens present in the wound. This occurs frequently in patients who have diabetic foot and pressure ulcers. Hence, management of the diabetic involves great acceleration of foot ulceration. Ideally, dressing should alleviate symptoms, provide wound protection and healing. No single dressing fulfills all the requirements of patient with an infected foot ulcer and other contaminated wounds. However, every category of dressings has specific characteristics that aid selection. There are various types of wound dressings such as, foam and alginate dressings are highly absorbent and effective for heavily exuding wounds. The hydrogel wound dressing treatment facilitate autolysis and may be beneficial in managing ulcers containing necrotic tissue. Dressings containing iodine and silver encourage in managing wound infection and it is more efficient. For infected wounds occlusive dressings should be avoided. For the wound inspection all dressings require frequent change. Deeply exudating ulcers need regular change to reduce maceration of surrounding skin. Dressing choice should be guided by the characteristics of the ulcer, the requirements of the patient, and the involved in wound care cost. These dressings display their own advantages and disadvantages in the wound treatments. As a physician has to deal with many patients with different types of wound like acute, chronic, burn and foot ulcers conditions every day. It is thereby very important and helpful to have a good knowledge about the right type of dressing for particular wound and also the right time for wound dressings for patient’s prognosis. In this review, we will discuss the different wound dressings and its comparative effectiveness on contaminated wound and ulcer.